I had the pleasure yesterday of accompanying two of our middle schoolers to the Venice Chalk Festival. If you never went to the chalk festival when it was in Sarasota or haven't been since it moved to Venice, you're missing something! Sarah Martin and Maggie Shannon spent all day Saturday working on their art along with professional "chalkers" from the USA and many other countries. When I returned to Sarasota, I spent some time wandering through the Art Festival on St. Armand's Circle. Our own Mrs. Quattro (elementary art teacher) was there in her booth displaying her talents. It was good to see some of our students and their parents visiting at both fairs.

The School Improvement Plan (SIP) required of all schools in the state was submitted to the district executive director for review last week. It will now be submitted to the Sarasota County School Board for approval and then will be available to the general public. Written in the SIP are goals relating to improving SAA in several different areas. While we are required to plan for improvement in reading and math (especially math!), we also want to target improving attendance, student engagement, and our performing and visual arts programs. Once approved, I will post the goals on this website. It's important that everyone in the school community knows what the goals are.

As Mrs. Curulla and her kindergartners reminded me, school - even in this testing time - is about more than math and reading test scores. The class learned about Veterans and how special they are. Mrs. Curulla wrote, "They wrote thank you letters to some veterans at my mom's church to let them know how they are heroes for serving in the armed forces and helping to keep America safe. They worked hard on their letters and were very proud of them. As you know, we mailed them. Today at my mom's church I was overwhelmed at the appreciation the men and woman had for these simple letters. THEY LOVED THE SURPRISE and were so excited that a kindergarten class took the time to send them notes. It brought tears to their eyes. Mine too. Many of them are hanging them in their offices. That's pretty cool. Some are even going to send little notes back to the students." Thanks, kindergartners, for doing something special for special people!

Thank you to the students who collected money for UNICEF at Halloween and are now collecting food for the Mayors' Feed the Hungry campaign. The campaign runs through November 20. Please send in something to share with those in our community who are in need. Thank you to all of the middle schoolers who brought canned goods to the dance last week. As we mature as a school, it is important to improve in our academics but also to develop a school culture that is uniquely SAA.

Don't forget the Family Fun Night at Evie's this Tuesday. The SAC meeting is Wednesday at 4:15 in the administration building. And save the date for December 8 when we have the parent forum on internet safety. 4th, 5th, and 6th grades are on field trips tomorrow (Monday) and K-3 is on a field trip Wednesday. See the calendar for more information.

Have a great week!​Cecilia Blankenship

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